


Show, Don't Tell (The Dirty Pictures Dub)

by lorax



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Community: remixredux09, M/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-21
Updated: 2011-04-21
Packaged: 2017-10-18 11:40:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorax/pseuds/lorax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are educational things to be found beneath Camelot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Show, Don't Tell (The Dirty Pictures Dub)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [faynia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/faynia/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Night Arthur Finally Became a Man(aka. The Night Arthur Discovers Gay Porn and Sort of Likes It)](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/3001) by faynia. 



> Written for Remix Reudux 09: Love Potion No. 9. Thank you to [(Beta to be revealed later)](Beta) for the beta read.

  
**Show, Don't Tell (The Dirty Pictures Dub)**   
_"So the summer is eternity for you?  
Sleeping in until your father's shaking you down.  
He's shaking you down." - The Decemberists_   


The cavernous, maze-like halls beneath Camelot were good for any number of things.  In Arthur's youth, they had been a place of damp stone and mystery, at once frightening and appealing. They'd been perfect for games of hide and seek that he'd always lost, in those days.  It wasn't until years later, when he began to hunt that he learned the patience to sit in silence and wait, and go unfound.  He'd given himself away with scuffling feet and quickened breath, and one of the other children he'd played with would either find him, or they'd look the other way apurpose, to let him win.  The only way for a King's son to win and know he deserved it was to be better than anyone else, so they needn't let him win, that had been a lesson he'd started to learn during those early games as well.

When he grew a little older, the same dim halls became a respite.  His father, Morgana, his duties, his tutors - they all failed to find him when Arthur retreated to some hidden cubby beneath Camelot.  It was his private place, sacred and secret.  Later he'd learned that his father had always known where he was, and simply chose not to follow often, but then it seemed a place all his own.

Under his father's rule, Camelot grew and Arthur trained to one day follow Uther and take the throne, dreaming of the changes he would make even while he knew that he should be planning instead to continue the traditions.  The spaces beneath his kingdom changed again, becoming a place of secret passages - a place of movement instead of escape.  The long, damp halls became the paths Arthur and the other boys took to creep in and out of the castle. They escaped from overlong dinners and affairs of state, and slipped out to meet girls and visit the tavern.  They were a secret, still, but a shared one, and the loss of his private spaces never bothered Arthur because of the sense of camaraderie it brought.  He was the King's son, still, and when he stepped into a room the conversations sometimes quieted.  (Though always a shade too late, and Arthur had often wondered how the men couldn't KNOW that their voices carried, and that Arthur always knew more than what he'd been told.) The cuffs the other young men received in training went missing, or hit all the harder - wary of striking a Prince, or going out of their way to prove that it didn't matter.  Neither made him feel as much a part of them as knowing he trod the same paths to and fro, in the small hours of the morning or the dimmest hours of night.

In the beginning when Arthur spoke to the others outside of the training halls, it was of battle, or training.  They would debate the merits of a long sword against the brutish, unwieldy two-handed weapons, or the protective weight of armor against the fleetness of unarmored bandits who somehow always found the chinks.  As they grew older, the talk turned to girls, and Arthur would listen in mixed envy and embarrassment as the older men spoke of their conquests.  

He was Prince Arthur, Uther's heir, and like everything else, the beddings and banter spoken of around him were cautious at first, fearing his reprisal or disapproval, and Arthur wasn't unaware of the scoffing about the milk-fed, dandy Prince that went on behind his back.  But when Arthur laughed with the others, or listened with the same curious fascination, the stories grew longer, and more lurid, and they began to look upon him as a fellow, and not an intruder.

Long before he'd ever bedded anyone himself, Arthur was intimately familiar with the sounds Hela, the stablemaster's daughter, made when she had a man between her legs. He imagined it lost something in the telling, though. Sir Rannald's voice having very little in common with any woman Arthur had met, and his imitation thus less than trustworthy.  He knew too that Lady Landoine wanted nothing more than to show her gratitude to Sir Bors, and any other two men, for their assistance all at the same time, and that she'd done so to more than a few sets of young nights, and still left them all worn out while she was impatient for more. He knew that Helen, the widow of his father's former squire, liked nothing more than a younger man in her bed, and he knew above all that in stories, women were always better endowed and less ladylike than they ever were in reality.

It was the talk of bored, idle men and Arthur spent many nights envisioning the stories he'd been told while he was alone in his room. With only the ragged sound of his own breathing and the rasp of his hand to keep him occupied as it brushed the sheets on each rapid stroke.  

Some of the men abstained from the stories and the bedding alike.  They spoke of chastity as a virtue owed to God, aside from the wedding bed.  Jumping form wench to wench, bed to bed - that kind of luridness belonged to the old religion and the old ways, and that way led to darkness, they claimed. Usually, they did so with a faintly upturned nose and a sense of superiority that made Arthur have to fight not to roll his eyes.  In the daylight, Arthur thought they likely had a point, and had silently vowed again and again to do as they did, and keep himself pure.

But then the nighttime would come and his hand would wrap around himself and he'd think of Hela's long, pale thighs sliding up Sir Rannald's sides while she cried out in pleasure.  Then he would think that really, wasn't it better to take care of such thoughts and needs on his own?  And what harm was he doing anyway, with his late night thoughts and pleasuring hand?

The stories turned to pantomimes, eventually, with a hapless squire pulled in to demonstrate just how a certain wench had been grabbed, or how swiftly she'd dropped to her knees.  Arthur always hoped the woman in question was a good deal more enthusiastic about the proceedings than her stand-ins were, as they usually played along with expressions of embarrassed distaste and much-ignored protests.  It was Arthur himself who first  picked up charcoal to illustrate a particularly improbable tale.  It was meant as demonstrative only, as there was no physical way that the position being described could ever be attained by anything human, and Arthur highly doubted anyone was using sorcery just to contort themselves for a romp in bed.  

After much laughter and general denouncement of his artistic skills (and a few expressions of sympathy for any wench unfortunate enough to look like the lopsided artistic interpretation he rendered), Arthur found that he'd started a new trend.  At first, it was just crudely written statements and the odd stick figure. It wasn't his fault that the drawings begin, or that he saw them. It was perhaps his fault that he kept looking, though.

They got better, or worse, depending upon your point of view.  Few of the knights displayed the same skill with a quill (or stray bit of charcoal, as was most common) that they did with a sword, but they proved creative, nonetheless.  Arthur had no idea quite how many words rhymed with _blow_ until he began reading the comments left on the walls.  The hallways that had once been his playground, and later his sanctuary became a new source of education that he doubted his father would have approved of.  Though if one believed some of the older knight's stray comments, Uther would not only have had his own limericks and sketches to add, he would have taken up a whole wall all on his own, but Arthur preferred to not contemplate that at length.  He preferred not to contemplate that at all, actually.

The first time he actually lay with a woman, he spent half the time running through dirty poetry and their accompanying stick illustrations in his mind, wondering if that was actually what he was meant to do, or if it was as big a heap of rubbish as most of the stories he'd heard.  He was relieved when she took over, and the decisions about just how to go about things were out of his hands. It was good, as were the times that followed, but Arthur was always left wondering just how much of what he'd heard was fabricated, as things never seemed to develop along the fanciful and immensely paths he' heard it implied they would.

The drawings got more elaborate.  Arthur took to trying to suss out who was writing what by their handwriting, but it was difficult to tell.  He suspected that they were practicing somewhere on parchment, since the figures began to take on discernibly human shapes instead of stark sticks with curiously rounded breasts.  They began to take on curves, slim backs tapering down to rounded hips as a woman bent forward, delicate hands wrapped around an erect and improbably proportioned cock.

Arthur, used to wandering the halls with one knight or another and laughing over the newest addition to the walls began to find himself walking alone.  The deeper he went into the tunnels, the larger and more elaborate the illustrations got.

He began to tell himself frequently, and with great sternness, that he was too dignified to stand in front of a drawing on a wall trying to imagine which knight those hands belonged to, or which barmaid's plump arse that was while he wanked off in the middle of the bloody halls. That worked for all of two months before he began to sneak down at odd moments in the middle of the night and have a go.

He'd made up excuses in his mind, pretending he was nipping down to check the armory, or sneak out the back exits to have a look at the watch and make sure the men were staying awake.  It was rubbish, but it gave him a reason to say where he'd been on the odd chance he ran into someone else.  And by "someone else" he meant "Merlin".  Excepting the one time when he'd literally bumped into a sleepless Morgana, on his way back up to the castle.  She'd taken one look at his presumably red and somewhat shiny face and then smirked, told him she'd just pretend this had never happened, and gone her way.  He hadn't looked her straight in the eyes for days. Beyond that thought, it was always Merlin.  Merlin had an uncanny ability to show up where Arthur least wanted him to be, and go missing whenever he wanted his boots to have a good polish.

He'd considered the fact that maybe Merlin was on to him a few times, but really he'd dismissed it as ridiculous.  Merlin could barely find his own head to hang a hat on, most days.  Following him about to watch him stare at walls seemed beyond his attention span.  He'd managed a solid week without bumping into Merlin on his path downstairs or back up again when his streak came to an abrupt end.

He was standing in front of the newest sketch, half trying to make sense of it and half admiring it.  He could see the edges of the bed, and the curve of a breasts and a pert, uplifted chin as a girl arched up beneath a man.  He was broad-backed and long-haired, and Arthur wondered who he was, wished that his head was turned so he could make out the shape of his face.  He stared, and could almost see the thrust of his hips, the writhing of the pretty girl beneath him.  He could almost hear the creak of the bedframe.

He stared through his lashes, breath speeding and hand sliding down, half staring and half imagining the scene as he opened his trousers, pushing them aside just enough to wrap his fingers around himself, hand moving in time to the rhythmic breathing he imagined he could hear. The flickering light of the torch he'd shoved into the wall sconce almost gave the image the illusion of movement, and it wasn't an easy fantasy to bring to mind.

The crash of Merlin dropping something he was probably _meant_ to be cleaning tore Arthur away from his fantasy, his eyes turning to meet Merlin's.  Arthur felt his face heating in miserable embarrassment, but blustered through, frantically trying to pull up his trousers and faster them properly.  "You needn't stare, Merlin, you act as if you've seen a dragon."

Merlin's mouth had been hanging open in an unflattering little slack-jawed "O" of surprise.  It snapped shut as he gave a start, glancing guiltily back over his shoulder and then at Arthur.  "Erm, well yes, dragon might be overstating a bit."  Merlin's expression took on the familiar mix of rueful realization and barely hidden amusement that it always did when he realized he'd just shoved his foot in his mouth.  "Not to say. . . I mean dragons are generally big, but they do actually come in all sizes, I suppose, so it might not mat-"

"Shut UP, Merlin," Arthur snapped.  He'd wish that there could be a trap door in the floor that would swallow him whole, but with the strange layout of Camelot, there might very well BE some ancient door that would drop him into a forgotten dungeon.  He decided to wish for a hole in the floor beneath Merlin, instead.  "It isn't as if we need make an issue of this."

"No.  Of course not.  I mean you were only. . . roaring.  With your dragon," Merlin answered helpfully, swallowing in an uncomfortable way that Arthur was sure meant he was biting back a laugh.

Arthur resisted the urge to bash his head against the wall behind him. "Just. . . we needn't mention this again.  Ever."

"Of course not.  Wouldn't dream of it.  Won't say a word."  Arthur silently began to count and was amazed when Merlin made it to ten seconds before blurting out.  "So do you do this sort of thing a lot?  I mean not the. . . roaring, but there's a lot of these drawings up, so really if you've been-"

Arthur resisted the urge to bash _Merlin's_ head against the wall.  "NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN," he repeated vehemently, turning to stride away.  He glanced over his shoulder to find Merlin looking speculatively at the wall and groaned to himself.  

If Morgana somehow heard of this, Arthur was having Merlin hung.

He stayed away from the pictures for nearly a month after that.  He caught Merlin hanging about after hours a few times, but didn't give him the satisfaction of telling him to bugger off.  Or at least he didn't give him the satisfaction more than twice.

Arthur lay awake more than a few nights thinking about it though.  He wondered if there were new sketches, or if the damp air in the tunnels were beginning to wear away some of the older ones, erasing them from view before he could commit them to memory.  Finally he couldn't stand it.

Arthur was careful, taking the most roundabout routes, keeping to shadows, wearing his darkest tunic.  Despite that, he still managed to cross paths with Gwen, who smiled and wished him a good night and either didn't notice the bright red of his cheeks, or had the grace not to comment on them.  Arthur wished that other members of his household would have half of her discretion and good sense.

He found things largely the same as they had been the last time he'd been down there, and was a bit disappointed, really.  Time away had made the excitement seem greater than it was.  He walked down the halls, watching the slow progression of the art, how the drawings changed from rhymes and sticks to women's body parts, and then to to scenes, the men gradually taking shape along with the women, though never enough to be recognized.

Finally he reached the last few, and his eyes lingered on the sketch Merlin had caught him in front of.  And then drifted past it.  

And he tripped and knocked into a wall.  

He couldn't tell who they were any more than he could in any of the others, but there was no woman in this sketch.  The figures were unmistakably two men, one sitting astride the other, his back a slow arch and his hands gripping at narrow hips, the shadows and rough stone wall hiding where his face might have been drawn.

A sound in the darkness nearby wrenched his gaze away, and Arthur lowered the torch he held, hurrying away and back to his rooms, forgetting to hide his return as well as he had his exit, but going thankfully unseen nonetheless.  He tossed and turned in his bed, achingly hard and with thoughts he'd never entertained before racing through his mind.  He tried to turn them to women, to the girls he'd bedded himself, to ANYTHING else.  It didn't work, and when he gave in, stroking quick and rough and coming across his own head, it was that drawn scene he imagined, all fleshed out and real with muscled bodies and deep-voiced groans.

He went back the next night.

And the night after that one.

A new drawing appeared every night.  All men.  Men with their broad hands and taut arses drawn in shocking detail on the walls.  The sketches outlined muscles and long lines of legs and torso.  Arthur caught himself watching his knights as they practices, trying to match the shape of shoulders to the drawings, the length of leg to what he'd seen sketched. He expected someone to mention it, in mockery if nothing else, but no one did. It was so thoroughly uncommented upon that Arthur wondered if he wasn't going a bit mad and imagining it, sometimes.

A week after the first sketch appeared, Arthur saw his own face outlined on the stone walls.  The sketch was heartstoppingly accurate.  He saw the flat of his own nose, the curve of his jaw, the scar on his bicep, all sketched in lines that were almost too perfect for the rough charcoal depicting them, real enough that they might have been magic and about to move.  His sketched eyes were closed and his head was back, the man kneeling between his thighs was slim and bent over him, swallowing his cock enthusiastically.  If he stared hard enough, Arthur could almost see the bob of his head as he moved.

Arthur intended to turn away, but he found his eyes following the shape of the lines, skipping over his own features to stare at the vaguer figure servicing him. He studied the surprisingly well-rendered shape of a mouth, the face half obscured by shadow, the line of the man's arm where it crossed his chest following the edge of the stone, wrapping around the length of his own hard cock while his lips wrapped around Arthur.  His head was tilted back, the full length of the other Arthur's cock buried down his throat.  Arthur's fingers touched his own throat unconsciously.  It must hurt, he thought, swallowing someone down that deeply, that wholly.  As if hungry for it, it almost seemed.

He dropped his hand when he became aware of what it was doing, feeling the heat of his own fingers against his throat and shivering, his mind imaging someone else entirely. Arthur could hear the too-loud sound of his own breathing all too easily in the still, narrow space.  The stone against his back was startlingly cool compared to the sudden heat he felt flushing along his skin. He was achingly hard, and his fingers slid downward, hasty and clumsy with his own trousers.

Arthur made himself stop, drag in a deep, steadying breath. He was Arthur Pendragon, son of Uther, Knight of Camelot.  And if he was going to have a wank while staring at his own face, he was going to at least manage his own clothing properly, he told himself. He'd have told himself that he wasn't going to wank at all, but that'd be a lie he couldn't even keep to for a few moments.

Instead he composed himself enough to shove the torch into the nearest wall sconce, freeing both hands so that he could open his trousers.  Arthur leaned back against the wall, eyes shutting and hand moving over himself, losing himself in the feel of it, and the fantasy unfolding in his mind. Those well-drawn lips seemed familiar, a face almost forming in his mind's eye.  He almost had it when his body froze in place, some sixth sense warning him a moment before the heat of a hand not his own wrapped around him, startling him into a moan.  Arthur opened his eyes to meet Merlin's.  "What-"

He was stopped by Merlin's free hand clamping over his mouth.  "Shut up.  Just this once, you shut up.  And let me.  We won't mention it again.  Or we will.  If you want.  We can mention it all the time if you want. I won't even say anything about dragons, or how bloody thick you are, if you just. . . just let me," Merlin's whinging ended on a strange, breathless note.  Merlin's hand against his mouth smelled of charcoal and herbs he couldn't name, but recognized just the same. His face was close and his mouth was suddenly familiar enough that Arthur was amazed he hadn't seen it immediately, hadn't recognized the shape of his lips or the angle of his stupid, stubborn chin.

Arthur let his hand fall away from his own cock as Merlin's started to move, and he shuddered, licking his lips when Merlin's hand left his mouth.  "You dre- drew the pictures," he managed, voice stuttering over the words.

Merlin paused and his mouth quirked in a smile.  "Worked that out all on your own, did you?  Did you REALLY think Sir Reginald was that handy with a bit of charcoal. Or that they wouldn't be drawing yet another version of Lady Fancyface and her lady bits if it had been?"

Arthur would have told him what a prat he was, but then Merlin's hand was moving again, and he groaned instead, actual words becoming a bit hard to manage at all.  Merlin's hand was callused against him, and suddenly Arthur could find the narrow shape of Merlin's neck, or the skinny length of his legs in all of the drawings he'd been staring at, too. He could find the same likenesses in the fantasies he'd so earnestly tried to keep himself from having, but failed to deter at all.  His eyes turned back to the drawing, seeing Merlin's cheekbones in the half-formed face deep throating the drawn, and admittedly generous, image of Arthur.  "You can. . . " he trailed off without finishing, breathing a struggle to maintain in any kind of proper manner.  It wanted to escape in gasps or huffs of moans.

Merlin turned his head, following Arthur's gaze and then looking back at Arthur, smirking in a way that made Arthur, who was fairly sure he'd never thought about the idea before, want to kiss him. It made him want to punch Merlin a bit too, but that was infinitely more familiar.  Merlin beat him to the punch, leaning in with a press of lips that were both more forceful and softer than Arthur expected, kissing him until Arthur's lips parted and he could taste Merlin's tongue against his.  The kiss proved that Merlin was an unexpectedly good kisser, and that he'd been nipping from Arthur's wine at dinner again. Liquid courage, he supposed dazedly.

When the kiss broke, Merlin cast a last significant look at the picture and wriggled his eyebrows ridiculously.  "Lets find out if I can," he answered, and then dropped to his knees.

~~


End file.
